The Living Arts

Press, 17 October 1978, Page 10

The Living Arts

“A Study in Contrasts” is the title of an exhibition, in the Robert McDougall Art Gallery . featuring engravings and etchings by Rembrandt and van Dyck. One of the purposes of the exhibition is to give the public and students an opportunity to make a close study of the work of Rembrandt and van Dyck. To assist them an audiovisual tape-slide programme, lasting 30 minutes, has been prepared by students taking stage 111 “Netherlandish art 15801675.” The students have also assembled and hung the exhibition. Sir Joshua Reynolds said in 1784, “Painters should go to the Dutch School to learn the art of painting, as they would go to a grammar school to learn languages.” While most people know of the work of Rembrandt and van Dyck, they do not often get the chance to see it. This exhibition will give a opportunity to study van Dyck’s position as a portraitist, and also the relationship of Rembrandt’s graphic work to his painting. It will contrast the highly personal, individual etchings of Rembrant with the superb portraits of van Dyck. Sir Anthony van Dyck was bom in Antwerp in

1599. and by his early teens was chief assistant to Rubens. In 1620 he visited England briefly, and he then studied and worked in Rome, Florence, Venice, Palermo, and Genoa, where he laid the foundations of his career as a portrait painter. After his return to England in 1632, he was knighted, and enjoyed im-

mense prestige and success. However, he later forsaw the outcome of Charles I’s precarious position in England and tried to re-establish himself on the Continent, but by then he was ill. and he returned to England to die in 1641. Rembrandt van Rijin (1606-1669), whose life might well be taken as an

example of the vicissitudes of an artist, was the master of pyschological penetration. and. as his life progressed. an ever-deepening self-analysis. His religious etchings present examples of matters seen through the eyes of protestant Northern Holland. The first known dated etching is 1513, but the great period of this form of art came

m the seventeenth century, culminating in the work of Rembrandt. He created new genres and rateed them to an importance previously given to »il painting. No other artist was able to give such full expression to his personal life for he had the ability to transform a humble domestic scene into a biblical event.